


what tangled webs we weave

by creampuffs



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: F/F, Feelings Realization, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12968247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creampuffs/pseuds/creampuffs
Summary: Sucy is the first to notice the burgeoning relationship between Akko and Diana. The act of observing is a slippery slope though, and looking out is always easier than looking in.





	what tangled webs we weave

When she first meets her, it's easy to be bored by Akko's predictable nature, and from the very start of their conversation (if you could even call it that), she finds herself thinking about how she already has her figured out. Overly talkative, air-headed, noisy and loud. Most people slip under her radar this way, quickly dismissed as being too droll, too flat, or too uninteresting. What she soon finds curious though, is the ironclad determination and the shameless and reckless way Akko hurtles towards her goals.  
  
It's compelling. Criminally thoughtless, life-threatening, and cockatrice-taunting degrees of stupid at times but still, it's curious and interesting.  
  
Despite all odds, Akko squirms her way out of her damning first impression and proves herself to be an entertainment and novelty worth keeping around. So keep her around she does, or rather, fate aligns their paths in such a way so as to  ensure that there is never a single day in Sucy's life that isn't full of loud shenanigans or some level of trouble-making.  
  
While she's never felt the need to verbalize it, Akko and Lotte are truly the first real friends she's ever had. It's unsettling how easily they fit together, and the dynamic between the three of them is fluid and familiar, shifting when needed and held together tightly by the simple fact that they all care for each other, even though they express it differently. In light of this, it only makes sense that Sucy keeps a watchful eye on them, an eye that is just as careful and probing as the gaze she reserves for her most favorite mushrooms, mixes, and potions.  
  
Fortunately, it's hard for others to tell what she's thinking about or noticing at any given time. Such is the usefulness of appearing monocular and mostly disinterested in the minutia of the everyday. So she carries on unnoticed, collecting and watching, seeing and observing.  
  
As time goes on, she finds herself learning more about her friends and even coming to enjoy their peculiarities. Each and every new experiment on Akko yields in more exciting results than the last, and Sucy feels lucky to have such a durable (although sometimes non-consenting or uninformed) test subject and roommate. Even Lotte's kindness and empathy colors her life with habitual acts of questionable goodness from time to time, just enough to throw everyone off their guard.  
  
She keeps an ongoing mental list about their traits and habits, and makes note of any changes as they occur. Akko likes strawberries and matcha, and Lotte adores peaches and vanilla. Akko loves  mystery films and Lotte obsesses over classic romance stories. They both like their tea sweet, though Akko always adds at least one more sugar cube to her cup before it's finished. Through repeated tests, Sucy learns of a spot on Akko's back that if prodded, yields an ear-shattering yowl of surprise, no matter how embarrassing or public. And from one particular potion that somehow involves wrapping Akko's sleeping head with skinned mushrooms, she discovers a tiny hidden cross-shaped scar on the right of her forehead, covered by her bangs.  
  
These are only some of the fascinating pieces she keeps in her compendium of facts, and she takes a certain degree of pride in her collection. For the most part, any new developments in their behavior are minimal and non-threatening, and do little to disrupt her overall understanding of what makes her friends tick.  
  
It isn't until quarter-semester that she begins to notice new mannerisms in Akko that seem...odd.  
  
By this point, their clashes with Diana, Hannah and Barbara are becoming more and more frequent, and while it was always normal for Akko to be quick in barking back when insulted, Sucy finds herself catching the way that her bright eyes shine and linger on Diana's at the end of each dispute. The spite and level of frequency with which she babbles on about the heiress is a bit out of place too, given how Akko normally has the attention span of a brain-dead fish.  
  
It's strange, and requires deeper investigation. From that point on, she pays particular attention to Akko's face whenever she's in a conversation with Diana, and while indignation certainly seems to be the most prominent emotion, there also seems to be...something else. Was it competition? Perhaps even jealousy? One day, during a particularly feisty argument between the two, she finally notices a new sign. As Akko yells back a confident claim about her magic skills (or lack thereof), she sees a faint hint of red dusting her cheeks. Shuffling through her mental notes, she can tell it's not a flush from anger. The hue is all wrong. She blinks slowly, a new theory beginning to take form.  
  
As intriguing as her theory behind Akko's new behavior was, she was never one to be too hasty in her conclusions. Or that was normally the case, anyways. Of course it would be that her one, off-chance moment of hastiness in testing a new mix would cause a train wreck of catastrophic proportions that quite frankly brought all theorizing to an abrupt halt. There was no way to expect the ensuing debacle that was Akko parading through her internal thoughts while rolling around in the secret depths of her mind and almost even-  
  
\--anyways, it was over, miserable and embarrassing and unacceptable yes, but over.  
  
It admittedly takes a long while to get back on track after that.  
  
In the following days after that horrible excursion, she spends more time and energy than she'd like in trying not to think too deeply about Akko's use of words or unexpected declarations. Akko was always an especially excessive person, particularly in moments of high drama, and with her intensity level constantly rammed at a level ten, it was hard to know when to take her seriously. So to make things easier, Sucy chooses to not think about any of it at all, especially the attempted kiss and the over-the-top proclamation of love. She takes the necessary time to shove that horrendous and embarrassing event into the deepest crevice of her mind, and focuses on resuming her daily activities without delay.  
  
It doesn't quite help with the unsettling dreams she starts having though. They are dreams of an Akko who is sweet, kind, loving, stupid and fiery all at once, and she moves in an intangible way in an imaginary place that Sucy can't control no matter how hard she tries. In these wretched dreams, the kisses are warm and happy as they brush over her cheeks, and there are soft hands that push back her hair to cradle her face. Curled against each other, there is a heavy, hot and leaden longing that sinks into her bones, and it fills her until she can't breathe. It is only then when the dream cuts off, dissipating like vanishing smoke.  
  
She always wakes up feeling flustered and angry, but blessedly at hours when her two roommates are still deep asleep.  
  
At first, it's easy to blame it on the lingering effects of Akko's idiotic romp through her brain. Of course it would make sense that there would be leftover traces of Akko, or maybe even contaminated bits of herself that caught Akko's contagious stupidity. But when the dreams continue to happen, and start happening with more frequency, Sucy begins to debate the merits of making an antidote for herself. The only thing that gives her pause is the fact that drinking one of her own potions was how she got into this mess to begin with.  
  
For distraction, she throws herself back into the ritualistic activity of observing her friends. She notices Akko's unruly locks of hair, soft and disobedient in the morning. She catches the clean, simple scent of her shampoo when she walks back into their room after her showers. She identifies the tell-tale sound of her shoes in the crowded corridors, syncopated as she skips madly to class in the hopes of avoiding another tardy mark. She watches the way she eats when it's dinner time, hurried and rushed, and almost always talking at the same time. When she one day catches her eye lingering on Akko's face, following the shape of her nose and the curve of her mouth, her blood suddenly goes cold.  
  
This strange feeling, this idiotic and hopeless tumor of emotion wasn't going away. It was getting _worse_.  
  
And Sucy wasn't blind about her past and ongoing observations either. Akko and Diana simply weren't the same around each other after she had chased down the other girl to bring her back to school. Which in itself, was an act bold enough to have confirmed a considerable amount of her initial theory about the two.  
  
Looking down at the plate of her unfinished meal, Sucy suddenly feels incredibly tired. There must be some degree of irony, she thinks, in how watching an idiot for long enough can eventually make an idiot out of you.  
  
Spearing a marinated mushroom viciously with her fork, she chews slowly and swallows. There is a moment of complete silence in her mind before she reaches into her robe to pull out a vial, sneaking a drop of her most recent sample right into Akko's soup. When the tuft of hair on Akko's head eventually morphs into an angry pigeon who squawks loudly and poops on her hair, she finally finds it in herself to laugh, not only at the panicked and mortified expression on Akko's face, but also at the unexpected and mad ways of the world and the fickleness of her heart.  
  
Despite the absurdity of it all, things are somehow easier to manage after that. 


End file.
